1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a generator mounted on a vehicle such as a passenger car or a truck.
2. Description of Related Art
There is known a vehicle generator provided with a function of detecting an output current thereof, as disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-315397. Such a vehicle generator includes a current detector disposed so as to surround an output terminal thereof. This current detector is constituted by a U-shaped laminated core disposed around the output terminal, a rectangular parallelepiped laminated core disposed at the ends of the U-shaped laminated core, and a current detecting coil wound around a bobbin through which the rectangular parallelepiped laminated core is inserted. The output current flowing through the output terminal can be determined on the basis of the output of the current detecting coil.
However, since the current detector of the type described above has a complicated structure, and accordingly its production cost is high, the production cost of a vehicle generator provided with such a current detector becomes high. In addition, since this type of the current detector including the laminated cores and current detecting coil is a relatively heavy component, the weight of a vehicle generator becomes large when such a current detector is mounted to the vehicle generator.